4 inmates walk away from Honor Farm

FRENCH CAMP - Authorities are searching for four men who escaped from the minimum-security Honor Farm in French Camp early Tuesday morning, including one AB109 inmate, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said.

FRENCH CAMP - Authorities are searching for four men who escaped from the minimum-security Honor Farm in French Camp early Tuesday morning, including one AB109 inmate, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said.

The inmates walked away from the facility about 6:30 a.m., said Deputy Les Garcia, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office. Three of the inmates, described as Honor Farm kitchen workers, were last seen getting into a silver four-door sedan just outside the facility's open gates, authorities said. The vehicle fled north on South Wolfe Road, officials said.

The inmates were identified as Dennis Jamel King, Alexander Duvalle Williams, Robert Michael Baguindo Jr. and Henry Lee Heath. King was being held at the Honor Farm under Assembly Bill 109, which calls for most non-serious, non-sexual, nonviolent offenders to be housed at county jail facilities instead of state prisons, Garcia said.

"The Honor Farm was built in the 1940s, and it was originally designed to house sentenced, misdemeanor inmates that were just waiting to serve out their sentences, but in today's world, where we have jail overcrowding, we now have sentenced and unsentenced inmates at that facility," Garcia said. "The facility is unsecured and the gates are open, but if they choose to walk away, then they're charged with escape. We have deputies out looking for them now, and once they get brought back into custody, they'll go over to the main jail facility and face those charges."